Recent Posts: Influencer Relations

A first glance at the Analyst Value Survey shows new risks emerging for analyst relations professionals. We’re hosting a webinar on November 30 to hear how leading AR professionals are responding to them, and what the best practice is for your analyst relations program. Three risks stand out massively. First, there a big gap between the firms that vendors think […]

Five things stand out from vendors’ responses to a survey we conducted after our Analyst Relations roundtable at the English Speaking Union. Analysts (including analysts who call themselves consultants or advisors) are often thought to have bias, especially if most of their revenue comes from vendors. Sometimes the effort put into staying informed makes analysts seem very process-driven but less […]

Should someone you know be at the year’s most important discussion on analyst relations? We’ll be at the free ARchitect User Forum 2016 in San José, CA, on November 17. Professionals from industry leaders will introduce the sessions: Lopez Research, Digital transformation; IBM, AR in large organizations; Cognizant, Managing analyst events; Capgemini, AR knowledge management; Wipro, Intelligence-driven relationships; and ARinsights, AR […]

The Analyst Value Survey is open! Each year several hundred users of analyst research tell us which analyst firms they use, and which are most valuable. In exchange, they get access to our results webinar, where they discover which firms are delivering the most value in key market segments. You can take part too. Go to AnalystValueSurvey.com and click on […]

Looking for a new direction in your Analyst Relations career? October is a time when new opportunities pop up in the field. From IBM to Google, we gathered the top US Analyst Relations firms with vacancies needing to be filled. If you’d like to learn more about the opportunity and to schedule an interview, contact these firms directly. However, if […]

Gartner has achieved stable double digit growth in research contract value over last four years due to increasing the sales force and expanding the end-user client base. This translates into increased influence on vendor sales.

Gartner is tuning Events to deliver more IT professional attendees. Events will be retired as well as added. More emphasis is going to be on Symposia and Summits. Vendor lead generation teams need to do a zero-based revaluation of all Gartner Events to determine where to increase or decrease investment in sponsorships.

As always, a big selling point is helping end users save money on vendor contracts. Vendors should ensure that their sales teams understand the role of analyst in the sales cycles and are prepared to leverage positive commentary and mitigate negative commentary. See the example to the right where the client question was “the best way to negotiate an enterprise wide agreement with Technology Provider Y”

Research consumers (end users or vendors):

Gartner has rolled out and will be rolling out new products and new ways to get more value from existing services. Research consumers should invest a few minutes talking with Gartner account executives to ensure they are exploiting all the new tools, such as portal personalization.

Gartner is intent on cross-selling and up-selling throughout existing clients. Companies that do not have centralized analyst contract managers should consider consider adding this function to ensure that growth in spending is managed and reasonable.

Read more of this post to see the live blogging. All times US Pacific Standard Time

9:23 am – Wrap up

9:21 am – Q-Consulting utilization? A-Discussed numbers.

9:20 a – Q-Business on financial segment and impact of credit problems? A-Gartner is very diversified and not concentrated in any one industry. That said, have not seen impact on business.

9:18 am – Q-Consolidation? A-Have a business development group and always looking for opportunities. However, growth is not contrainted organically so not as critical.

9:16 am – Q-Competition and consolidation? A-Lots of sources of competition from searching on the Web to other analysts. Gartner is differentiated due to 650 analysts. No downward pricing pressures due to competition.

9:14 am – Q – Silverlake Partners ownership position? A-Transitioning down, we’re managing that so that it does not hurt other shareholders.

9:12 am – Q-Year 1 and Year 2 reps and how they are ramping up vs past? A-Detailed analysis at 3 mths, 6 mths, etc. Analyze CV levels and what is needed to be productive.

8:42 am – Increasing sales effectiveness and marketing lead generation. Reduced number of accounts per territory by 27%.

8:37 am — Growth of sales force. NCVI (net contract value increase) four most important letters in the alphabet. Improving sales rep NCVI productivity year over year. Lots of opportunities inside an existing client as well as green field opportunities. All represent a possibility to increase influence over vendor sales.

8:33 am — Tim Noble, Sales. Hmm, I use to do sales calls with Tim when he was a bag carrying sales rep in the UK. 804 sales reps. 52% Americas, 36% EMEA, 12% APAC

8:15 am –Alister Christopher, Events. 44,000 attendees at 62 events. Competitive advantage based on the unreasonable due to leveraging analysts. Example 26th year of Data Center Conference, which is still growing. Lists why IT professionals attend. Had a video of attendees of Compliance & Risk Management conference which was this week talking about why they attended even in this economic climent.

8:12 am — So far no breakdown between numbers of end user and vendor clients. States focus is on the end-user market. Cross-sell Benchmark and Contract Optimization solutions. Potential for increased influence?

7:58 am – Per Anders Waern, new head of consulting. What happened to Bob Patton? Emphasis on saving money for clients. Examples of benchmaring, sourcing (claims helped enterprise save $26m out of $81m IT spend by better sourcing),

6:28 am — Peter Sondergaard discussing Research success. Big name IT trends indentified by Gartner. Big name government user. Big name vendor users. Gartner analysts quoted in the press and other media. Note — many vendor executives do not get the breadth of Gartner influence.

6:15 am — Untapped market opportunities. Same discussion as previous investor days and earnings calls. However, more numbers on enterprises with recently assigned sales reps – 1,851 enterprises over $1bn in revenues. This on top of ~1,150 (confirm number) $1bn enterprises already clients. Then there are 39,000+ enterprises $100m to $1bn.